


l i e s

by nimrodcracker



Series: and still I haul my heavy feet [6]
Category: Star Wars Legends - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords
Genre: Gen, Gender-Neutral Revan, Korriban, Lightsaber Battles, Mind Manipulation, One-sided Revan/Exile, Self-Doubt, broken trust, suicide ideation mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-01
Updated: 2016-05-01
Packaged: 2018-06-03 23:40:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6631783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nimrodcracker/pseuds/nimrodcracker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>the exile takes a walk in ludo kressh's tomb.</p><p>// if you're here for revan/exile interaction, skip to chapter 3.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Past

**Author's Note:**

> so, playing through the shyrack caves on my _n_ th re-run of kotor 2 dumped this fic on me...sigh. It keeps happening.

Malak is fury given form, saber strikes clumsy and hard-hitting like a turbolaser barrage. A second of inattention is all he needs - and he bashes her jaw with the hilt of his lightsaber.

She narrowly dodges the red blade that sears her cheeks with its proximity.

Her twin sabers move twice as fast, resisting the onslaught with deft parrying. She skips around him and the bodies of her slain (not)friends, baiting him to overextend himself - his one weakness in stance.

He bites.

She lands heavy on her right and he _lunges_ -

-while she scissors through his torso from under his arms.

The world melts; her skin's drenched with sweat. Shivering. She's been slashing at air, but the viscous liquid dribbling from her mouth is warm. _Real_.

Doors flank her on both sides, but the Force pulls her forward and _only_ forwards. Her soul wills, her body obeys - but her thoughts do not.

"That changes nothing," she mumbles, thoughts jilted by her frenzied footfalls along the halls. "You'd join up again despite the misery." Shadows jump around her, darting from brick to brick, fleeing the glow of her silver blade. "They were ravaging _entire systems._ You couldn't just do nothing."

Teeth chattering like they're disintegrating bone, she bloodies her sleeves when she tries to wipe her mouth.

"You weren't fighting to avenge. You fought to protect. To save."

She senses them before she sees them. Shyracks up ahead; more than one, less than she can't handle.

"Wasn't that what they believed? Revan and Malak thought they needed to act. Those who answered their call did. And they all succumbed to the dark."

One step, two sweeps, and the shyrack falls in three. Rinse and repeat.

"Vrook said I was dark. Zez Kai-Ell refused to tell me. Visas says I'm just like her."

She slams into the stone door - naively thinking it'll budge - only to hurt her shoulder ( _impossible?_ ), then her sabers finally weigh something in her hands and she slashes wildly at the door, top to bottom, left to right, thinking _Am I dark? Am I dark? Am I-_

The door gives way and she falls through.

She's in a tomb, she knows that at least, claustrophobic walls and revolting dankness making her head spin, so why has she rolled onto _grass?_

She feels a presence nearby; not physically, but by the crippling fear that seizes her until she blocks it.

"Comm says we've lost another transport. General, we can't possibly charge across the minefield."

She can't stifle her sob.

* * *

"General?"

She rises, expunging her fears like the blood she spits out of her mouth. Captain Stoyve is still the reed-thin woman she remembers, hair as white as Atris'. The soldier who refused to be carted to the infirmary, even with shrapnel crippling both her legs.

She looks the Captain straight in the eye. "You're not real."

"The rest of the company's pinned down at our remaining troop transports." Stoyve shakes her head. "Is pressing forward worth our lives, General?"

It's as if Stoyve's deafened to denial; insistent that she's real. Or is it because _she's_ the stubborn one?

 _Touché._ That's what she does best - not listen. At least the vision's accurate.

Ahead looms the Mandalorian stronghold, and she re-orients herself: their attack needs to be swift, before the Mandalorians discover the onslaught on the main gate's just a distraction. This mountain ridge is where their defence line is the thinnest, and this is where the Republic must punch through.

A decade ago, General Olic ordered her unit to charge, and the minefield shredded half of them to bits.

But it's different today. She's Ryder Anesidora, and this is a hallucination. A vision that'll not progress till she decides on a choice. Delaying won't kill anyone. She hopes.

"I'll clear the mines," she tells Stoyve.

When she briefs her troops, her plan is met with silence; gratitude is what they radiate, and they take cover without another word. They trust her. They always have.

She uses the Force - grasping as many mines buried beneath earth (her telekinesis is an embarrassment), before tugging them _up-_

She barely raises a Force barrier as shards of shrapnel whizz through the air, peppering her protective bubble with pops and hisses. The explosion's probably loud enough for the orbiting Republic Fifth Fleet to hear, but the mines are in harmless pieces and they're surging across, hellbent on overrunning this last pocket of resistance.

Hindsight allows her to see Stoyve alive past the minefield. To see most of her unit standing strong and above the bodies encased in _beskar_ , the remnants from a previous skirmish. It's a blissful lie she can comfort herself with today, that she's saved them.

In truth, Stoyve was the first to die.

But blasterfire erupts from the ramparts and her soldiers still fall like Pazaak cards. Calling for mothers, gods. Anything.

She hastily steps forward and _sinks_ , a pressure plate under her feet, gut coiling so tightly she fears her chest will tear from the effort.

They've crossed a minefield, only to enter another - but that hadn't happened then, right?

One second of indecision, and her whole world explodes.


	2. Present

When she comes to, she's back in the tomb.

She stays sprawled on the chilly floor, wishing _oh_ -so-badly for it to swallow her up and end her miserable existence. She isn't fooled - Malachor was supposed to be her grave. Yet she's still here, tugged along like a marionette to the whims of the Force.

But her joints ache and she crawls to her knees. Standing takes more effort than she thinks possible, but the Force prods her towards the door and she _cannot_ , for the life of her, discern what lies beyond the empirical because her mind is a fog and her perceptions numb from the nexus of darkness that clogs her skin like oil.

The sight of Kreia is a relief, and she breaks into a jog.

"Kreia," she rasps, and her mentor turns.

 _Malice_. It isn't Kreia, even if she hasn't been dropped into another world of horrors. It's just another vision. Her real mentor's a blank slate in the Force.

"You are to be commended to have come this far."

It's said so cryptically, so _Kreia_ -like, that she starts to question her grip on reality.

Fear surges in her gut and she searches for its source, only to find _Atton?_

She's confused when Kreia and Atton trade barbs. It's so infuriatingly _normal_.

She rests her hands on the lightsabers clipped to her belt when Bao-Dur walks in. Now they're _all_ hurling accusations at each other, stinging words crashing about in the confined space. Sometime during that, her whole jolly crew appears, Atton raises a blaster at Kreia and that's when she decides she's had _enough_.

" _Atton_." She steps closer to him. " _Drop_ your blaster."

"You're letting the old scow live?" Not-Atton snarls, and his venom makes her flinch. "Don't tell me she's wormed inside your head!"

Her reply is instant. "She hasn't."

It's nothing she doesn't know. Kreia _has_ been using her - but to what end, she hasn't figured out so far.

Deny as she may, her crew crowds around the three of them. So does the bitterness they carry with them, but her strung-out senses recognise something in the malice: an echo of herself. Her confusion only mounts.

"Your companions have decided that I deserve death, Exile. Are you permitting this?"

" _You_ haven't been that truthful to me either," she retorts. On a hunch, she adds. "Expected nothing less from a former Sith Lord."

"Former." Kreia dwells on the word, as if she can tease out a hidden dimension to it - and she does. "It is an identity I have long discarded. Am I not deserving of redemption?"

Her mind stops, the derision evaporates. The answer to that won't just be rhetorical. It'll be a reflection of who she is.

There's no need to mince her words, she finds. The realisation is crystal-clear.

"Yes."

With that, she ignites her sabers to bat away the barrage of bolts flying her way. Not-Atton gets her elbow in his face and he drops, stunned, while the tomb lights up in lurid technicolour. The crackle of saber hitting saber grates on her hearing and she ducks _just_ in time to avoid Visas' sweeping strike - before springing up to slash her from waist to shoulder.

The Miraluka collapses with the softest of sounds and the whole tomb is silenced, all traces of a battle purged from existence. But her split lip still stings, and so does the blaster burn on her right thigh.

_Are these wounds even real?_

Chills run down her spine when her answer to that isn't a resounding _yes_.

"My name is Ryder Anesidora. I'm an exiled Jedi. A former General. I entered this tomb to test myself and I will walk out of here alive."

Like before, she heads on to where the Force directs her - another door. What's astonishing is the surrealism that settles around her, something she remembers experiencing...above Malachor V.

A brief pause, a sharp intake of breath. "I will walk out of here alive."

The door slides open without preamble. When she registers the person beyond it, she's never felt more ready to dismember a rancor.


	3. Future

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you've read the previous fics about my Exile, you'd know that she despises Revan - but there's more to it. Prepare to be surprised. Also, the idea that the Force is entropy isn't mine. Inspired by [this](http://sncklfrtz.tumblr.com/post/143307985154/jasjuliet-respainey-jollysunflora) series of posts.
> 
> wrote this with Jule Vera's Friendly Enemies playing in the background; it's hella rad

" _Revan,_ " she spits. "The _famed_ Hutt-slime."

Her danger sense spikes; she barely raises her sabers in time. Blows rain on her from a red lightsaber that she flawlessly ripostes to skewer _herself?_  Whose eyes are now an acidic yellow, and breath reeking of death. The next instance she blinks, she's speared on her sabers no longer. Another blink, and she staggers at the abrupt vastness of standing on a catwalk in a reactor core.

_Orbital Station QZ-28. On the fringes of the Rolion Sector._

"Venetia, Venetia." Her attention's dragged to the robed figure, stalking closer in sync with her haggard breaths. "What a title to greet me with. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't glad to see you again."

"Shut _up_." She hates that Revan's calling her that. The name squirms inside her like a parasite, begging to be ripped out like a tumour. "Shut the _karking_ hell _up._ "

It's the bland simulacrum of Revan's post-war attempt to recruit her. And against her better judgement, she's _still_ willing to hear her friend out.

"Anger?" Revan's bemused. "Still the impenitent spitfire I grew up with. See, you continue to baffle me. Here you are, acting all un-Jedi-like, _and_ adamantly refusing to accept that you're just like us. At least Malak and I agreed on that."

"I'm not a genocidal maniac."

"Genocidal? Perhaps. Maniac?" Revan tutted. " _No._ Do you really think I did what I did because power had cleansed me of sanity? I'm _appalled_. I acted as such for the same reason you heeded Malak's call."

"We did what we thought was right." She says it when Revan does, and her heart stops. Briefly.

"Bantha crap. You _lie._ "

"Haven't we been through this? I made th-" Revan looks away. "There's no point. I don't have to justify myself to you. If that helps you sleep, so be it."

She thinks that's the last of it - only to roll her eyes when Revan leans in, head cocked to a side. 

"Or am I being awfully optimistic? Are those dark circles I spot around your eyes?"

She has no answer for that.

 _Is this real,_ she thinks. _Real or another vision maybe a nightm-_

" _Ah._ " Her insides recoil at the inflection of Revan's voice, echoing everywhere in the colossal emptiness. "I'm mistaken. It's not that you're blind to our... _glaring_ similarities. You just haven't forgiven yourself for it."

Revan whittles the distance between them with long strides and she retreats, until she knocks against the door and _there's nowhere left to run_.

"Isn't that right, _General_?"

"Get _out_ of my _head_."

She lashes out with the Force, only for Revan to smack her lightsabers out of her grasp with their bare hands. The full weight of Revan's maniacal grin falls on her; a grin so sharp it cuts without drawing blood, even though it's hidden behind a mask.

To her horror, she can't summon her fallen blades, nor shatter the invisible chains shackling her to the door. Blood pounds between her ears like a jackhammer and she's powerless and helpless: it's the medbay of the _Aegis_ all over again.

"Still ignoring me? I'm absolutely _un_ -surprised. After Dxun, that was basically how _you_ treated _me._ " A beat; a renewal of attack. "I can't help but notice how you've found a new hobby. You know, the one where you tried to vanish off the face of the galaxy? Everyone believed you left to heal, but I _know_ you. You wanted to disappear. You wanted to _die._ And frankly, that's the most spineless thing you could've done."

Revan's mask is inches from her face. She sees herself reflected on its polished finish - her futile struggling, her visceral fear. The whites of her eyes watch her, transfixed, while her mind just can't. _Think_. All thanks to _Revan_.

_But this isn't what had happened._

"Ven," Revan smirks, and she winces. Her nickname is foul in Revan's mouth. "You believe I've invaded your mind, haven't you? Stripped you of the Force, blocked your connection to it?"

If she cracks her skull open, will this nightmare end? Not that she knows, but she does it anyway, banging her head against the door in tune to a _shut up shut up shut u-_

"Oh no," Revan casually interrupts. "The chains are _yours._ "

Her fallen sabers fly into her hands. The Force surges through her like a tsunami and she's battering the vile murderer with staggering blows, powered by righteous fury and adrenaline.

It makes her _sick._ But even worse: there's no trace of her friend left beneath the mask.

"I am your darkest thoughts given form," Revan sneers. " _We_ are the night terrors that devour your dreams!"

She's tiring; her limbs heavier with each strike, her reflexes milliseconds too slow. Revan's side-stepping her blows and she wonders how long more she has before collapsing from exhaustion.

"There's dark in you. Whatever you do, it'll stay like the scars marring your pretty face. And it's not just you." Using the Force, she snaps parts of the catwalk's railings and hurls them at Revan - and they're sliced to ribbons in a dazzling arc of violet and derisive laughter. "Even the fools sitting in their glass tower, those self-proclaimed _masters_ of the light. There's dark in them, too!"

 _You talk too much_. It's a fleeting feeling, but it lingers long enough for her to swipe (unsuccessfully) at Revan's jaw.

"Did you know the Council fed you lies? The Force isn't the benevolent life-force you perceive it to be. The more you siphon, the more it _corrupts_."

 _Revan's tiring_. She notes how Revan's strikes are slightly off-target, footing a little less sure. And she sure as hell isn't listening to the schutta.

She exposes her left when she slashes wide and Revan thrusts - a fatal error. Her offhand blade swings round and Revan runs into it.

 _Checkmate._ The corners of her lips lift in a smirk as the void within those eye-slits glare at her. Her saber deactivates with a finality that rings in the air, just as Revan staggers closer to her.

"Venetia. _Listen_."

The sudden change of tone is jarring; it's not a snarl, nor a sound of anguish. Revan clamps down on her shoulder and she cringes at the chilly vice. "We don't win. Insignificant fools like us never win. The Force isn't a blessing, it's a _curse_."

It's like Revan's trying to convince her. Revan, the liar who declared the Mass Shadow Generator wouldn't interfere with Malachor's natural gravitational fields. The liar whose lie cost her the Force.

She doesn't listen to liars. But Revan still lives.

"I chose _you_ for Malachor. Over Malak. To sever your Force connection. Or kill you. But you misconstrue my reasons."

She's torn: are her delusional wishes manifesting as this spectre of Revan, or is the Force telling her what Revan did not?

"Don't you understand? The dark side can't corrupt you if you can't feel the Force." Revan's shaking her with a baffling urgency. "I was trying to _save_ you."

She wants to yank off Revan's mask to convince herself that behind it, there _isn't_ the hooded eyes as black as the void and razor-sharp jawline of a face she's known all her life because this person sounds _just_ like the Lennox she knew but that _can't_ be. So she does, grasping the rim of Revan's mask with hesitant fingers - far _gentler_ than she should - and Revan lays a hand over hers, almost like a caress.

"I still am," Revan murmurs, and the choice is robbed from her.

She feels the currents of air envelop her with a whisper - but by then, it's a little too late. Revan tosses them both off the walkway.

If it isn't the whistling of air in her ears, it's the screams that deafen her as they plummet into the bottomless abyss.

* * *

She hasn't ceased screaming.

Her voice has long cracked; now, it's the tonal equivalent of rubbing sandpaper on wood.

She doesn't recall when she began tearing her vocal cords. Judging from her voice, it must've been quite a while.

"Exile."

It's a new voice. Another whisper.

" _Scram_ ," she wheezes despite the pain, body twitching all over. "I'm hallucinating. Again."

 _I was trying to save you._ Revan's (or Not-Revan's?) words are preposterous. More barefaced lies from a sociopath gleefully toying with her feelings, making it as if Revan cared when Revan never did at all. Or Not-Revan's a product of her own delusions, unearthing feelings that should've been left the _frick_ alone. Still, all of them are _filthy_ lies.

Then why is there the unexplainable wrenching in her chest?

The edge of the platform's no further than a meter away, she realises. How easy it'll be to roll off into the abyss and be done with life. Maybe then she'll wake up. Maybe she'll die. She's past caring.

The voice sighs. "Use your senses."

Her eyes jolt open. There's no compulsion in that tone.

For once, she listens.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _whatever you say i don't believe_  
>  _your promise is lost in fantasy_  
>  _cross my heart i swear we'll die_  
>  _friendly enemies_  
>  ([~](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOLwfaxuPvA))


End file.
